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Communications

Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.

The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.

More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.

The Anglo-American Telegraph Company was organized in 1865 as a joint British-American venture to lay an Atlantic telegraph cable. After three failed attempts by other telegraph companies, Anglo-American Telegraph Company successfully laid and operated the first trans-Atlantic cable in 1866. The company operated cables until 1912, when they were leased to Western Union

Summary

Records relating to the organization of the company, corporate and financial records. Corporate records include two volumes of the company's acts, charters, contracts and agreements, 1862-1883; minutes of board meetings relating to varied subjects, such as agreements between the company and other telegraph companies such as Western Union Telegraph concerning sales of property, details of trnsactions or purchases undertaken by the company. Financial records consist of nine volumes of "journals" showing monthly records of receipts, 1866-1912; nineteen volumes of ledgers reveal a detailed financial status of the company, 1866-1912; and nine volumes of cash books consist of the financial transactions of the company, 1904-early 1941. See also 1 folder of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company telegrams in the Warshaw Collection under the heading "Telegraphs"

Deal, an electrical engineer, graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1920. He joined the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia and was assigned to the Radio Apparatus Division and then to the television research department. Later he worked for the RCA Company, Moorestown, New Jersey. He researched improvements in radar reception techniques for the Defense Electronics Division

Summary

This collection includes blueprints, schematics, photographs, notes, and some correspondence of Harmon B. Deal, engineer with the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company, relating to a study on the possible lines of development of television in 1929

William Dandridge Terrell (1871-1965) was born in rural Virginia and worked in government service for twenty-two years in the communications field. His specific duties are unknown, but in 1911, after his government service, he was appointed to a New York civilian post. His new duty was to insure the efficient operation of the freshly pioneered wireless apparatus on all Atlantic based Naval ships. In 1915, Terrell was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he supervised a staff of thirty-five. As Chief of Radio Division in the Commerce Department, Terrell was responsible for monitoring the [the use of?] radio nation's defense forces. Terrell was promoted to Chief of Field Operations for the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), which was created in 1934. Terrell continued in that post even when the FRC was changed to Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Terrell retired to Florida in 1943 at the age of 72. He died on March 23, 1965

Summary

Collection documents William Dandridge Terrell's life from his 1911 appointment to the Commerce Department to the his death in the 1960s. The collection consists of a brief and partially completed autobiography and descendant listing; a large body of correspondence related to financial planning, insurance policies, and appointment notices; a program from an American Wireless Operators Convention held in his honor; several retirement announcements; business correpsondence concerning Terrell's inspection job from 1911-1914; and four photographs of Terrell, his family, and his friends.

Cite as

William Dandridge Terrell Papers, 1911-1964, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Harris, radio engineer and executive, served in various capacities in the Tropical Radio Telegraph Company, a subsidiary of the United Fruit Company, 1916-1963

Summary

Correspondence, notes, articles, and photographs assembled by Harris on the history of the United Fruit Company and Tropical Radio Telegraph Company (TRT), 1904-1961. Also includes manuscript histories of companies; material on the application of teletypewriters to radio circuits; blueprints, schematics, reports, and manuals concerning the technical work on TRT; and a scrapbook of William Edgar Beakes, president of TRT, 1939-1943

Cite as

Charles Cohill Harris Collection, ca. 1906-1976, Archives Center, National Museum of American History